"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[Evie]

Also, on the topic of original vision - nothing you have ever seen or read or heard is "the original vision". Original visions evolve and change constantly due to the evolving thoughts of the creator, the limitations of their means, and the influence, sometime greater, sometime lesser, of a plethora of different possible third parties.

Also, for movies, WHOSE original vision would that be? The director's? Or the scriptwriter's, who actually wrote down what shoud happen? Or, for adaptations, the original writer whose source material is being turned into a movie? Or the producer who saw the source material or idea and the potential for a movie? The set decorators, costume makers and makeup artists, who have as much if not more to do with what we see than the director? Or the actors without whose' vision the characters would remain flat? A movie is a collective effort between all of these, and dozens of others, all of who have their own original vision, all influencing the final product. Reducing it to the director's original vision being sacrosanct is an insult to the rest.

"I know film better than Stanley Kubrick" is not a take I was expecting

That would be because, for approximatively the eleventh billionth time, that's not what I said. But then, I suspect you know that already,

 

[Lexicus]

I said I hope an artist's vision is respected, as in the case of Civilization 6. RKO didn't respect Welles's vision to the point they went behind his back to change the film. It's like a restaurant owner interferring with the chef in the kitchen. Just let the chef cook

Okay, but what if I as a restaurant patron think the owner's idea improves on the chef's vision? Am I just objectively wrong?

"I know film better than Stanley Kubrick" is not a take I was expecting

A rather puerile appeal to authority.

 

[Evie]

And a weak one; being a great artist and being a great ethicist or a great psychologist are self-evidently rather different things.

Many great artists, and scholars, and scientists, and engineers, have little grasp of the ethical questions raised by their work, or the way communication interact with the human brain. This is not necessarily a flaw on their part: ethics and psychology are disciplines in their own right and have very little to do with most of these other fields (ethic has more in common with philosophy or certain fields of theoretical law than with any of the above), so it's quite normal they aren't versed into them . I see no reason to believe Kubrick to have been an exception.

 

[Narz]

It's a little dance that the left and right have played for at least the last thirty years, dating back to "politically correct," and including, as people have noticed SJW and now woke. The left's basic message is "we should be caring toward people." Among themselves they give this a name, that they themselves use half-ironically. But the name they select does have a smugness implicit in it: I'm correct; I'm a warrior; I'm enlightened. And that implicit smugness pisses off the right: "what, you callin' "incorrect"? "asleep"? So the right aggressively re-purposes the term as a pejorative: "the so-called correct," the soi-disant 'woke' (though they don't use the word soi-disant), in attempt to cast that starting initiative--be caring toward people--as though it's burdensome, offensive, oppressive. Because the right's position is "we should be able to be as rude and obnoxious as we wanna be, and aint nobody gonna tell us different"

'Sensitive to' isn't always kind and 'rough w' isn't always obnoxious. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Using soft language =/ actual support.

Whether society uses the word crippled, disabled, differently abled, etc is less important that how supportive they actually are to those who need physical help.

 

[Evie]

True, but generally speaking (there can be, as in most things, exceptions) using the language prefered by the people directly concerned is a good idea nonetheless.

Note that this isn't always the language proposed by well meaning helpers; disabled or autistic (generally, though not always, the prefered terminology of actual disabled/autistic people) vs differently abled/person with autism (largely prefered terminology for their parents, educators, and similar) is a good example.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

'Sensitive to' isn't always kind and 'rough w' isn't always obnoxious. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Using soft language =/ actual support.

Whether society uses the word crippled, disabled, differently abled, etc is less important that how supportive they actually are to those who need physical help.

You disabled?

 

[Narz]

True, but generally speaking (there can be, as in most things, exceptions) using the language prefered by the people directly concerned is a good idea nonetheless.

Yeah of course. My new client was named Cynthia but she preferred Cindy so I called her Cindy but what I call her is less important than what I can do for her.

My favorite new label is nuero-divergent but I also find it a lil snarky. As if true normies actually exist.

 

[Evie]

I do love neuro-divergent. And while no single person is "normal", it seems self evident that "normalcy" - or neurotypicality - is just as much a spectrum that can be expressed in many ways as any neuro divergence.

Still, agreed what you can do matters the most.

 

[Narz]

'Oppositional defiant disorder' is a fun one too. Dunno if they still use that one. I tried to collect em like Pokémon, got that one in 1994.

 

[Berzerker]

I gotta find my phone and drive downtown to boycott the local TV station for showing Dave Chappelle

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I gotta find my phone and drive downtown to boycott the local TV station for showing Dave Chappelle

What's the joke

 

[Berzerker]

something in the Bible about gagging on gnats while feasting on camels

I buy Saudi oil and just about everything else from China and the USA and I'm gonna boycott some comedian?

 

[Zardnaar]

something in the Bible about gagging on gnats while feasting on camels

I buy Saudi oil and just about everything else from China and the USA and I'm gonna boycott some comedian?

Personally trying to minimse stuff bought from China.

Stuff you need is fine and is difficult to avoid eg clothes. Stuff you don't need that's a bit different.

 

[Evie]

Ah, yes, the great philosophy of "I can't heal my cancer so I shouldn't clean myself."

Just because you can't solve a big problem doesn't mean lesser problems aren't worth adressing.

 

[Synobun]

something in the Bible about gagging on gnats while feasting on camels

I buy Saudi oil and just about everything else from China and the USA and I'm gonna boycott some comedian?

As an individual consumer, your ability to affect the former is greatly reduced compared to affecting the latter. Just from a basic structural perspective.

 

[Angst]

Well, we can go back to the "explain it to me like I'm five years old"
Seriously, this can often be a good option, at least to start/sum up. It obviously lose the finer points, but at least it gets the general point across, refinements can come later.

These parts I think I've outlined that I understood. But it still leave my second question hanging : what am I supposed to do with it ? As in, what is the subject to discuss ? Because it looks like to me that it's just a personal constatation, but there isn't really a question or a point to debate going with it.

I mean, I can definitely find a lot to say on the general subject of "woke" (this thread is 13 pages long by now, so some people did jump in it), but I'm still unable to find the original direction of the discussion intended.
Just in case, I promise I'm not missing the question deliberately. I'm just honestly not seeing it.

I think yes it was me sharing my own position on the usage, and leaving it up for input and discussion. PSA of a personal belief that I do find somewhat relevant (if not for "woke", for a lot of the other scary-leftist terms, such as SJW, postmodern neo-marxism and cultural marxism). Other posters have chimed in, sometimes in disagreement with what I believe (this includes people from the left), and sometimes they found my position useful. Some are in the middle and try to find an outline of when it's useful, even if it's just a little.

I guess the subject to discuss is A) whether the usage of "woke" is useful at all, being an exonym and an approximation of disparate beliefs (some believe it is), and B) if woke is not useful, what to do when people use it.

And yea the OP pretty much being my opinion... I haven't sourced it, but I have read a few articles about the right's usage of these terms re: the Left. While it's been ages so I'm unable to quote academia properly, if you're willing to believe me on this: I'm not alone on this hill. There's a lot of confusion as to what progressive movements actually believe, including things that should be obvious such as feminism, where random feminist movements are picked up and universalized as something agreed on by everyone progressive. Explaining what the left actually is is a cottage industry these days, and have given rise to some of the weirder pundits of our time. Such as Shaun's excellent takedown of Stephen Hicks' Explaining Postmodernism and just ContraPoints in general.

 

[Angst]

And a weak one; being a great artist and being a great ethicist or a great psychologist are self-evidently rather different things.

Many great artists, and scholars, and scientists, and engineers, have little grasp of the ethical questions raised by their work, or the way communication interact with the human brain. This is not necessarily a flaw on their part: ethics and psychology are disciplines in their own right and have very little to do with most of these other fields (ethic has more in common with philosophy or certain fields of theoretical law than with any of the above), so it's quite normal they aren't versed into them . I see no reason to believe Kubrick to have been an exception.

Oh, we're talking artistry! I can actually chime in here.

I'm a published writer and I hold that without an editor, my work would be garbage. Some artists have a more individualist approach and feel some purity in their work that should go untouched, but I generally feel this isn't very constructive. Not just regards to morality, but in regards to making something actually good. Most succesful writers I know write socially, and pass their manuscripts around as they work on them to get input. The purity of the artist's vision is highly overrated and romanticized imo. There's a few artists that are visionary and pull it off being super independent, but other good artists, practicing art as part of their sociality, are not less visionary or valid for this reason.

 

[Evie]

Not published myself (I'm too easily sidetracked to finish the early editing, lol), but I'm on a first name basis with most of Ottawa's speculative fiction writing community, I hang out at their cons, I was a panelist at their last two in-person cons before the pandemic, and I've beta-read multiple published work, and...yeah, that matches my experience of writers and writing entirely.

 

[Gorbles]

People basing opinions on misinterpretations is a pretty central point of this thread

But not this tangent, which was started when you provided an article that demonstrated the apparent issue of boycotts because some people asked for a director to not get an award.

the problem is about policing morals in art in general

See, now this is a topic worthy of its own tangent, but we have to clear the rest of this up first.

Boycotts are punishment

This is the problem in selectively quoting the first part of a paragraph. You were talking about the example in the article, here. I responded saying it was about cause and effect and the choice(s) of the filmmaker. You're now trying to make it some generic point about boycotts that didn't have much to do with what we were actually talking about.

Once again deferring to the article.

That you provided as evidence, that I engaged with. If you don't like me using the article you yourself provided as evidence of a problem, tough luck I guess? What do you want me to say?

Until then, utilizing boycotts to shut down the speech you don't like isn't exactly championing free speech.

Nobody's speech is being shut down by any theoretical boycott you may or may not be referring to. But again, this is back to the wheel of "cancel culture", which is a whole other tangent.

I'm saying explore and see if there are other interpretations; there could be an interpretation that make more sense than a knee-jerk reaction to something you've seen once.

And if I did that and still thought the joke was in poor taste, contributing to racist stereotypes, and pretty much pointless in the greater plot of the movie? See, this is why it doesn't matter. I don't think you'd accept anyone's criticism of this movie (in particular), and I get it. You like the movie. But somebody criticising a thing you like isn't the same as criticising you, unless you decide to die on the hill of "racism is fine, actually". I doubt that's the case.

It's not just about the award, or whatever. You're literally trying to dismiss or counter the criticism itself. Which, again, doesn't really plant your feet in the camp of "accepting criticism".

Not really. "The bad thing depicted in art will cause the bad thing in the real world" is a tired talking point and insulting to audiences

Evidence the claim made, please. I did (with the claim I made).

Speaking of red herrings, news =/= cinema

Except the impact is on the viewer. There is nothing that separates political campaigns from something like a movie (or other form of art medium), because the target in all cases is the viewer.

And you haven't?

I've stated plainly that I agreed with the criticism as-provided in the article. However, I didn't have an opinion before reading the article. You already did, and it's becoming increasingly clear that it wasn't going to shift nomatter what anyone said. Evie and I (and others, I think) have all talked about the need for nuance and context, and how certain things in certain situations are more or less acceptable than others. We were open to examples, but in this case the example you're providing doesn't really support the point you're trying to make.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You disabled?

Whatever labels are used for us, at least make them polite, non-condescending, and if we object to what you are using, have the courtesy to ask us what we would prefer.

For instance, I don't see any sense in referring to a disabled person as "differently-abled." My inability to do certain things does not translate to a different ability.